On Omar Mateen

[QueEx]

'I complained multiple times that he was dangerous,'
former co-worker says of Orlando shooter


A former co-worker of Omar Mateen said Sunday that the man identified as the mass shooter in the Orlando nightclub massacre often used slurs against African Americans, gay people and women.

Daniel Gilroy, 44, worked with Mateen for about a year as a security guard at PGA Village South in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

"I complained multiple times that he was dangerous, that he didn't like blacks, women, lesbians and Jews," Gilroy told The Times on Sunday.

Mateen threatened violence in front of him, Gilroy said. Once when Mateen saw an African American man driving past, he said he wished he could kill all black people, using a racial slur, Gilroy recalled.​

"You meet bigots," Gilroy said, "But he was above and beyond. He was always angry, sweating, just angry at the world."

Gilroy, a former Fort Pierce police officer, described Mateen as "unhinged and unstable." He said Mateen talked about his father living in the area but did not mention his Afghan roots or his faith.

Gilroy said he quit his security job after Mateen began harassing him, sending as many as 20 or 30 text messages a day and more than a dozen phone messages. Gilroy said his employer, G4S, did not intervene.

"I saw this coming," he said.

In a statement released earlier in the day, John Kenning, chief regional executive for GS4, confirmed that Mateen worked for the company since 2007.

"We are shocked and saddened," Kenning said. Company officials said they are preparing a response to Gilroy's remarks.

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

SOURCE: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na...complained-multiple-1465777922-htmlstory.html

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[QueEx]

Omar Mateen: Portrait of America’s worst mass shooter

The shooter’s father says his son’s rage was born of seeing two men kissing in Miami

Co-workers recalled him as volatile and prone to slurs

A former wife said he was violent and abusive toward her

A photo of Omar Mateen from his MySpace page MySpace

Omar Mateen takes a selfie photograph, displayed on his MySpace page. MySpace

A photo of Omar Mateen, from Spectrum High in Stuart. Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene
at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place the night before, along with members of her church, in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. A
gunman opened fire inside the gay nightclub early Sunday, killing at least 50 people before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. (Loren
Elliott/Tampa Bay Times via AP) Loren Elliott AP -- A photo of Omar Mateen from his MySpace page MySpace


ORLANDO -- The man who committed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history had an online bride from Uzbekistan who said he beat her, co-workers who feared he had terrorist leanings and a father who hosted a cable show in which he claimed to be president of Afghanistan.

Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard from Fort Pierce, Fla., had been on the FBI’s radar since at least 2013, when acquaintances — at least one of them a former law enforcement officer — warned authorities that he was prone to violence, made unspecified threats and seemed to have radical Islamic ideas.

Mateen, a would-be cop who never made it through the police academy, had no criminal record but had a history of domestic violence and was investigated by the FBI twice, including two years ago when he was linked to another Fort Pierce man who killed himself in a terrorist bombing in Syria.

The FBI bureau in Tampa, however, closed their probes after concluding that Mateen, whose parents are from Afghanistan, posed no threat, authorities said.

Still, Mateen’s former co-workers described him as anti-social and someone who seemed to become unhinged at the thought of anyone who was black or gay.

“He was always on the edge, always hyper and agitated,” Daniel Gilroy, a former co-worker of Mateen’s, told the Miami Herald. “He would never have more than three or four sentences without using the word n----r or queer or dike. It was always about violence.”


Federal intelligence investigators are still piecing together what led Mateen, who was born in New York but had lived in Florida for the past decade, to march into a crowded gay nightclub, pull out two firearms, including an assault rifle, and open fire about 2 a.m. Sunday.

Mateen called 911 just prior to the massacre and pledged his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, and IS later claimed responsibility for the attack. There was no evidence, however, directly linking him to the radical Islamic group.

The gunman’s father, Seddique Mateen, told NBC news that his son’s rampage was not motivated by religion, but by homophobia. The elder Mateen said his son had recently visited Miami and became upset after seeing two men kissing in public at Bayside Marketplace.

He was always on the edge, always hyper and agitated.

Daniel Gilroy, Mateen’s former co-worker


IS is known for its brutal killings of homosexuals, and IS leaders had been calling for attacks on the United States during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and prayer.

“This has nothing to do with religion,” said his father, who in 2015 hosted a political TV show out of California in which he claimed to be president of Afghanistan.

He theorized that his son became enraged by two men who had been showing affection for each other in front of his son’s wife and 3-year-old son a few months earlier in Miami. “He got very angry. … They were kissing each other and touching each other, and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son, they are doing that.’”

The elder Mateen’s background has also come under scrutiny by federal authorities. Clips of his show, posted on YouTube, portray him denouncing the Pakistani government and pledging his support for the Taliban. According to Florida records, he also is the principal agent of a nonprofit, Durand Jirga, which supports the Taliban. The non-profit’s mailing address is Mateen’s home on Bayshore Boulevard in Port St. Lucie. The home was searched by the FBI on Sunday.

Records also show that Omar Mateen lived less than a mile from the last registered address of Moner Mohammad Abusalha, a U.S.-born suicide bomber who blew up a restaurant in northern Syria in 2014. Both men also attended Indian River State College, although Mateen received an associate’s degree four years before Abusalha studied there.

Mateen earned a degree in criminal justice technology in 2006, the Indian River State College spokeswoman told TCPalm. Abusalha took preparatory classes for two semesters for a physical therapy assistant program from 2010 to 2011.

Ronald Hopper, an assistant agent in charge of the FBI’s Tampa Division, said Mateen had been investigated for ties to Abusalha, but the agency found that contact between them had been minimal, The New York Times reported.

Property records show that Mateen’s family owns several properties in Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie and that they are members of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce.

Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman said Mateen had been a regular attendee since childhood and came in for worship three or four times a week.

“He will come the last minute; he will leave the first minute,” often with his young son, Rahman said. “He will finish his prayer, and he will just leave. …We would not see friends around him.”

The imam said Mateen was into bodybuilding and had been training to be a police officer but didn’t make it through the academy. He believed that Omar’s father sold life insurance.

Mateen worked security for a private company, G4S, at the PGA Village in Palm Beach County, where he was known for his cursing, diatribes and verbal slurs toward gays and African Americans, said Gilroy, the former co-worker.

Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce said Mateen had been a regular attendee since childhood and came in for worship three or four times a week.

Gilroy, a former Fort Pierce police officer, said he worked with him for about one year, finally quitting in March 2015 because the environment had become toxic.

He said he repeatedly complained about Mateen’s behavior to supervisors but they declined to discipline him because of his Muslim faith. Mateen frequently prayed on a mat while at work, he said.

The two did not work the same shift, but Mateen frequently talked to him because Mateen always came in to work early at the south gatehouse.

After Gilroy quit, Mateen began bombarding him with angry text messages, saying he felt betrayed. “I finally confronted him and I told him, ‘We’re not friends,’” Gilroy said. “He just had anger issues. I was scared for my family.”

Gilroy also said that Mateen, before his stint at the PGA Village, had been stationed at the security entrance at the Port St. Lucie criminal courthouse, where he also drew many complaints from co-workers.

He said Mateen often talked about his dalliances with women in the neighborhood.

“All he wanted to do was cheat on his wife,” Gilroy said. “He had very little respect for women.”

His ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, claimed that Mateen was unstable and frequently beat her. On a blog post, she said she left Uzbekistan for the United States when she was 11. She met her husband online and in 2009 moved to Florida to marry him.

“He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something,” she told The Washington Post.

Mateen eventually remarried and had a son.

Authorities searched his home in Fort Pierce, as well as his father’s home in Port St. Lucie, on Sunday. Authorities removed several paper bags and three boxes of folders from his father’s one-story home.

The imam said he was heartbroken by what happened. He said he never saw anything to indicate that Mateen harbored radical or homophobic views. Nor did he notice any recent changes in behavior in the private young man, who last worshiped at the mosque on Friday.

“Nobody agrees with the ideology of ISIS. We are struggling to remove the dust from Islam,” he said. “When something like this happens, it pushes us 10 years back. … We want to be at peace."

The mosque has asked the Fort Pierce Police Department to provide extra security but was told it didn’t have resources.

Omar Mateen has been employed with G4S since Sept. 10, 2007, said spokeswoman Monica Lewman-Garcia.


Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article83373602.html#storylink=cpy


Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article83373602.html#storylink=cpy

 

[QueEx]

Was this guy really an Islamic terrorist in the mode of ISIL, etc. ???

- or -

Was this guy himself gay;
mad at himself and others because he was gay;
this massive slaughter & pledge of allegiance to ISIS
really an attempt to make himself look otherwise; and,
in the end, his death merely a suicide-by-cop, cop-out ???

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[muckraker10021]

 

[Mrfreddygoodbud]

that security company G4s aint shit they knew he was a racist

and apparently had zero problem with it, despite all the complaints.

they are really downplayin the fact he had police officer friends....

but they keep mentioning he failed at wanting to become a police officer...

I wonder if it was the physical or psychological part...

 

[COINTELPRO]

 

[QueEx]

Was this guy really an Islamic terrorist in the mode of ISIL, etc. ???
- or -
Was this guy himself gay;
mad at himself and others because he was gay;
this massive slaughter & pledge of allegiance to ISIS
really an attempt to make himself look otherwise; and,
in the end, his death merely a suicide-by-cop, cop-out ???

Gunman Omar Mateen was a closet homosexual, say friends


The Telegraph
June 15, 2016

Was Omar Mateen secretly gay?

The man who murdered 49 people at a gay club in Orlando was a closet homosexual who used gay dating apps and frequented gay bars, according to friends and locals in the city.

Yet others who knew the New York-born killer have painted a picture of a gay man who could not come to terms with his sexuality.

“I recognise his face,” said Justin Datz, 33, who works at Parliament – a hotel and resort which has been home to the city’s gay community since 1975.

“I’m not on gay dating apps or anything anymore, but he certainly looks familiar. So when I heard he frequented gay bars around here, it all made sense.”

A member of the Independent Fundamental Baptist church, which condemns homosexuality, Mr Datz said he had some sense of what could have motivated Mateen.

“I went through that self hatred,” he told The Telegraph. “You don’t know how to accept it. But I was never part of a community that would kill me for my sexuality. And I was able to deal with it – unlike him.”

Vicky Bebout, 68-year-old doyenne of the resort, nodded.

“You know exactly how it went,” she said. “He was looking at those apps. His dad saw him. He said he hated it. He was about to get caught, and couldn’t cope.

“We see it all the time here. Guys come in at lunchtime, then go home to their wives.”

Mateen’s ex-wife, Sifora Yusufiy, has said he alluded to a secret private life before they were married – a marriage arranged online in 2008, which lasted two years.


"So, I feel like it's a side of him or a part of him that he lived but probably didn't want everybody to know about."

Speaking in Boulder, Colorado, she was asked directly by CNN whether she believed he was gay. Silent for three seconds, she shook her head a little and said: "I don't know."

She continued: "He never personally or physically made any indication while we were together, of that. But he did feel very strongly about homosexuality.

“He might have been gay but chose to hide his true identity out of anger and shame.”

"When we had got married, he confessed to me about his past - that was recent at that time - and that he very much enjoyed going to clubs and the nightlife," said Ms Yusufiy, who divorced Mateen in 2011 and said he was abusive and unstable.

In 2006 Mateen attempted to join the police. And a colleague in his academy class said he believed Mateen was gay. Mateen had asked him out, the classmate, who did not want to be named, told local television in Orlando.

“We went to a few gay bars with him,” he said. “I was not out at the time, so I declined his offer.”

Kevin West said that Mateen had contacted him on gay dating apps, and the pair exchanged messages for around a year.

They had never met in person, though, until they crossed paths by chance an hour before the shooting.

Mr West was dropping off a friend at the club when he noticed Mateen – whom he knew by sight but not by name – crossing the street, wearing a dark cap and carrying a black phone.

“He walked directly past me. I said, ‘Hey,’ and he turned and said, ‘Hey,’” and nodded his head,” Mr West told the Los Angeles Times. “I could tell by the eyes.”

Jim Van Horn, 71, said he was a regular at the club.

“He's a homosexual and he was trying to pick up men,” said Mr Van Horn.

“He would walk up to them and put his arm around them or something.

“And maybe try to get them to dance a little bit or something, and go over and buy them a drink.”

He once struck up a conversation with Mateen, but his friends pulled him away – saying there was “something strange” about him.

But another couple, who work together as drag-dancing performers, said they had seen Mateen as many as a dozen times at Pulse, and that he went to the club to escape his home life.

Chris Callen, 34, who goes by the stage name of Kristina McLaughlin, said Mateen began showing up about three years ago.

“He was a nice guy,” said Mr Calleen, who also works at Parliament.

“He was at the bar. He was actually talking with another guy. I turned around. I was in drag. I said hello. He seemed comfortable.

“As I was onstage he was standing next to somebody, having a conversation, having a good time close to the stage.

“Later on that night he was out there dancing with another guy. It could be he just went crazy. Maybe he got radicalised and hated who he was.”


SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...-regular-at-lgbt-nightclub-pulse-before-atta/


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[QueEx]

F.B.I. Arrests Wife of Killer in Orlando Mass Shooting​

Noor Salman, the wife of Omar Mateen. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times


WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. arrested the wife of the man who carried out a deadly terrorist attack in Orlando, Fla., and charged her with obstructing the investigation of the mass shooting, law enforcement officials said Monday.

Noor Salman, whose husband, Omar Mateen, killed 49 people and wounded dozens in an Orlando nightclub that was popular with gays, was also charged with aiding and abetting by providing material support, the officials said.

She was taken into custody by F.B.I. agents at her home outside of San Francisco, where she had been living with her young son. Prosecutors had been weighing charges against her for months in the aftermath of the attack by her husband on June 12, 2016.

Investigators interviewed Ms. Salman for hours after the attack and came to believe she was not telling the truth about her husband’s plans to carry out the rampage.

A Justice Department spokesman said Ms. Salman would make her initial appearance on Tuesday morning in federal court in Oakland, Calif.

The Justice Department’s decision to prosecute Ms. Salman, 30, ends part of the mystery that has surrounded her since the first days after the attack, when she became a central subject of the wide-ranging investigation into her husband.

In an interview last year with The New York Times, Ms. Salman said was “unaware of everything” in connection with the attack.

Ms. Salman said she had accompanied her husband to Orlando with their child once when he scouted the club but did not know the purpose of the trip. On the day her husband drove to Orlando, she claimed he said he was going to visit a friend, named Nemo, who lived in Florida. But Nemo was not living in Florida at the time, a fact Ms. Salman said she did not know.

She also said she had no reason to suspect that ammunition he bought in the days leading up to the attack was to be used in the shooting, given that her husband was a security guard who frequently purchased ammunition. On the day of the shooting, she bought her husband a Father’s Day card, expecting him to return that evening. Her lawyers believe that supports her story that she did not know about the attack.

During his rampage, Mr. Mateen used Facebook to pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State. President Obama has said that Mr. Mateen “took in extremist information and propaganda over the internet and became radicalized.”

Federal investigators do not believe that Mr. Mateen, who was 29, received any specific training or support from the Islamic State. Part of their inquiry has focused on whether anyone in the United States assisted in his plans for the attack.

There has perhaps been no figure more central to those questions than Ms. Salman, who grew up in an avocado-colored home in Rodeo, Calif., near San Francisco. In Rodeo, on a diverse block populated by Chinese, Indian, Korean and Mexican families, neighbors recalled a younger Ms. Salman as warm and kind.

Ms. Salman married Mr. Mateen in a ceremony near her childhood home in Northern California, a second marriage for both. After the wedding, Ms. Salman moved to Fort Pierce, Fla., where she and Mr. Mateen lived in a condominium complex.

Their marriage in 2011 caused consternation among some of Ms. Salman’s relatives, mostly because of her Palestinian heritage and Mr. Mateen’s ancestral ties to Afghanistan. Ms. Salman said in the interview with The Times that her husband beat her repeatedly and verbally abused her.

Members of Mr. Mateen’s family, who have tried to shield Ms. Salman from public scrutiny, have said they believe she did nothing improper.

“She is shocked, that poor lady,” Seddique Mateen, Mr. Mateen’s father, said in June, 2016. “And she doesn’t know anything.”

The Orlando police chief, John W. Mina, said in a statement that he was “glad to see” that Ms. Salman had been arrested.

“Nothing can erase the pain we all feel about the senseless and brutal murders of 49 of our neighbors, friends, family members and loved ones,” the chief said. “But today, there is some relief in knowing that someone will be held accountable for that horrific crime.”

In two recent mass shootings, prosecutors have brought charges against people with ties to the attackers.

In South Carolina, a friend of Dylann S. Roof, who was convicted of killing nine people on June 17, 2015, in a Charleston church, pleaded guilty in April to lying to federal investigators and misprision of a felony, or failing to inform authorities that a felony had been committed. The friend did not testify against Mr. Roof, who was sentenced to death last week.​

In 2015, the federal authorities in California brought charges against a neighbor of the husband and wife who killed 14 people and wounded 22 others in San Bernardino. The man, who bought the rifles used in the attack on Dec. 2, 2015, was accused of lying on forms filled out in connection with the purchase. Although he was also accused of planning a terrorist attack several years ago, the man was not charged with having a direct role in the San Bernardino rampage.​

However, federal prosecutors in the summer of 2014 declined to prosecute Katherine Russell, the wife of one of the assailants in the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013. F.B.I. agents believed she had made false statements to investigators and concealed knowledge of a crime.


SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/...an-arrested-orlando-shooting-omar-mateen.html


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